Ace Atkins - Dirty South

Teddy went to Freaknik in Atlanta and still paid women to be seen with him.

“Can we get money from anywhere else?” Teddy asked. “Did you check into the cars or the house?”

“Not in one night, man.”

“Don’t you know some people?” he asked. “People in Old Metairie. That kind of money like chump change to them.”

“Teddy, you are my friend. But it doesn’t work that way. I can’t just call up somebody and ask for a half a million. I mean, they’d think I was crazy.”

Trey stirred the martini with his finger. He knew he needed to call Molly, finally buy that sofa from Restoration Hardware, and maybe hook up with this gash who was in grad school at Tulane. A buddy of his had already fucked her. He’d buy her a drink and take her to the Hyatt or something. Heard she had an ass that just wouldn’t quit.

Teddy buried his head in his hands. The redfish entrée came and Teddy pushed it away. “Nick’s got to find it. He has to.”

Trey played with his drink more. Two women, dirty blondes in halters and fake leather pants, walked into the bar. Their boyfriends behind them. Couple of tools in cheap Gap shirts and tourist running shoes. Last year’s Nikes.

“I know this guy’s your friend, but who is he, really?” Trey asked, trying to seem interested in Teddy’s problems. “I mean, as a professional. He’s a teacher, right? My buddy Josh is a lawyer and has three investigators working for him. They’d do a better job. This guy doesn’t impress me.”

“Yeah?” Teddy said. “Nick once got this woman out of jail after forty years. Also took down that L.A. motherfucker that owned that Blues Shack club.”

“So he’s muscle?” Trey asked. “That’s not what we need. Let me get someone good on this. This guy, no offense, man, seems like a real loser. He was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon on it.”

“I have till the morning,” Teddy said, head up and watching Brill now. “Ain’t you listenin’?”

Trey shrugged. “Aren’t you above this thug shit now? You worked too hard. You don’t need people like that.”

“What you got goin’ on, Brill?” Teddy asked, looking Trey hard in the eye. He held his stare. “You wouldn’t want to see me lose, would you?”

“After all we’ve been through?” Trey asked. “We’re more brothers than you and Malcolm.”

“You still meetin’ with him tonight?”

“Should I cancel?”

“I guess not,” Teddy said. “Don’t have nothin’ to do with my troubles.”

Trey winked at him.

Teddy smiled. “You a hustla too, right?”

Trey smiled back and took a sip of the martini. “You know it, dog.”

I CHECKED WITH CURTIS at his house – and got nowhere – dropped by the warehouse and fed Annie, leaving on Cartoon Network for her to watch Super-friends, and headed out to a strip club in New Orleans East where I knew I’d find ALIAS. It was about eight o’clock and the sky turned black and purple on the horizon as I drove I-10 toward Slidell and found the exit. I passed an old Shoney’s and a now-defunct shopping mall that had become the place for local crack deals and gun-fights. The cops didn’t even like to patrol here anymore.

About ten years ago, New Orleans East was a suburb of corporate apartments and yuppie condos along with the usual strip malls and chain restaurants. But since the Hope VI federal housing initiative took off and local slumlords could get easy money through Section 8 housing grants, New Orleans East had taken over where the now-demolished Magnolia and Desire housing projects had left off.

But instead of brick and mortar sheltering the poor, it was Sheetrock and flimsy plywood – no apartment manager having to answer for shit while the slumlords grew rich and wrote off millions on their taxes.

The Booty Call Club was pretty much black-only with the loose gathering of basic out-of-town white businessmen with per diem cash to spend. Nothing special. A rambling building with no windows next door to a Denny’s. By the parking lot stood an industrial plastic sign of a cartoon black woman covering her breasts with a Mardi Gras mask.

The inside was dark, lit in a few areas with track lighting and neon beer signs. The air smelled like cherry incense and Pine-Sol. Toward a main stage where some woman was twirling on a brass pole to George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog,” I found Malcolm sipping on a forty-ounce and smoking a Newport. His Saints jersey running down to his knees and his Timberland boots propped up in a chair before him. A couple of other teens I’d seen at the video shoot gathered around the girl’s stage and stuck twenties into her garter.

She was brown-eyed and had long curly brown hair. She had a little pooch to her belly and her legs jiggled when she danced. But the more twenties she got, the more she shook it.

I pulled up a chair – the sound of the funk deafening – and leaned into Malcolm. He gave me a pound and offered me a Newport from his pack, his cigarette catching in the side of his mouth by his gold tooth.

“Where’s ALIAS?” I asked. The music shifted to this old Prince tune about not having to watch Dynasty to have an attitude, and Malcolm ran with it, bobbing his head, cigarette dangling from his lips as he listened.

“You gonna get that man that took all that money?” Malcolm took a sip of the beer. He’d been smoking it up and his eyes were a little tight. He just kind of hummed each word out of his mouth. Told me he loved me. Loved me for helping his big brother out. He asked if I wanted a cigarette again and I said I did.

He handed me the pack.

“I know you always bummin’ off people, right.”

I appreciated the gesture; he was into respect. Last year when two shitbags had almost killed Loretta, the Paris brothers were the first at the hospital. Malcolm called me about every day after that wanting to know what he could do. He would’ve killed somebody if I’d asked him.

I took a cigarette and tucked the pack in my jacket.

“I need to borrow ALIAS.”

“Take ’im,” Malcolm said. “Boy played out.”

“Was Dio like that?”

“Dio was nothin’ but heart,” Malcolm said. I still saw the boy’s face in the hardened man. He still had the same soft eyes and nappy hair from when he used to come by practice with Teddy. Fifteen and running errands for his big brother.

Malcolm cupped a cigarette to his face, smoke fingering its way up over the lines and creases the last ten years had left.

“That what killed him?”

“I don’t know what killed him, man,” Malcolm said. He turned away and took a long drag off the Newport and a deep swig off the forty. “I always thought it was Cash that snatched his ass.”

“Looking forward to meeting him.”

“Be careful, brother,” he said. “The man could turn Mike Tyson into his bitch. He likes to make you bow down. Bleed a little bit to his respect.”

“You think Cash took ALIAS for the money?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Naw,” he said. “Didn’t you listen to ALIAS? Some white man worked him. That ain’t Cash. He don’t play.”

“So I heard,” I said. “What happened with Dio?”

His smile turned.

“Couple of men took him last year.”

“Stuffed him in a van at that Uptown club?”

He nodded.

“And you don’t think that’s connected to ALIAS?”

“Why would it be?” he said. “Some hustlers took him down. He’s dead. We’ll never find him.”

“Police said it was you.”

Malcolm stuck the cigarette in his mouth and inched closer to my face. He mouthed the word “Shit,” and turned his back to me. “Goddamn, I used to respect you,” he said. “You just like ’em all. Fuck this. I don’t care if I told Teddy to find you.”